Pondicherry
Aurobindo Ghosh had intently listened to the 'Imphal Address' and was quite pleased to see a fellow Bengali reviving the old revolutionary cause. He also wanted the British out and for the first time in the last 200 years, had they been militarily defeated. He had abandoned politics 4 decades go, but after listing to Subhash, he wanted to go back. Perhaps it might mean death, but he would help the country become Independent. Aurobindo called up his old revolutionary friends in Bengal from the days of the
Anushilaan Samiti.
"How are you, my boy ?"
"I am managing, Auro Da."
"I trust you've heard Subhash's speech."
"I did. Perhaps there is hope for this country after all."
"There certainly is, Batukeshwar. I have a task for you."
"Your wish is my command, Auro Da."
"You do remember what they did to Bhagat ?"
"Da, I-I why are you bringing him up ?"
Suddenly the image of Bhagat being hung came in front of his eyes. Batukeshwar broke down.
"I need you to remember Batuk. I want that rage in you. For what you're about to do, it is required."
"What is it, Auro Da ?"
"How many Revolutionaries are you still in contact with?"
"20. Maybe 30. Why, what do you need them for ?"
"You are going to be the Fifth column, son. Subhash has brought the war to India and we must help him. Gather your men. Make your bombs and contact Subhash's man. Help them in taking Chittagong and Dhaka."
"Very well, Da. I will not let you down, I promise you.
"Vande Mataram"
"Vande Mataram"
Batukeshwar Dutt gathered his trusted associates at his safehouse in Chittagong and laid out the plan for them. There were a single rail line between Chittagong and Dhaka, for cargo, but had been repurposed to handle passengers when Imphal fell. The two cities were connected only by 15 Telephone poles and a single main road between them.
They were to destroy the track and the road and ensure that all poles were cut so as to destroy communications.
Batuk also contacted Shaukat Malik and was given special instructions to undertake an operation in the middle of the British garrison in Dhaka.
Aurobindo, on the other hand, disguised himself as a Pathan and travelled to Calcutta, once again to make an effort to liberate the motherland.
Tokyo
Hideki Tōjō had a new card up his sleeve. He had a peace with the Soviets, so he was secure on that front for the time being. His offensive into India had been a tremendous success and was going to get even better. The thorn in his side was China. No matter how many men and how many offensives, the wretched Chinese refused to surrender. The Americans were a separate pain in the arse. The navy would not be able to keep up with them for long. So it made little sense to throw in scarce resources into a lost cause. The Imperial government had sanctioned Operation Ichi-Go to link up South China with French Indo-China. The main objective was to neutralise American airbases in Sichuan and Guangxi to protect the offensive into India and establish a secure supply line for the army in India.
Tojo had decided to abandon further expansion into China for the time being. Once Ichi-Go would achieve its objectives, he planned to make the front-lines in China static and then make a tacit agreement with Chiang Kai-Shek to go after Mao's Communists in the North. Chiang, he figured, would be more than happy since he feared the Communists more than he did Japan. General Hayao Tada was brought out of retirement and sent to Shanghai.
His orders were to convince Chiang to make an unofficial ceasefire with Japan and then go after the Communists, perhaps even take some help from the Japanese.
Japan had decided to focus its energies on India, where a sympathetic populace awaited Subhas Bose and his Japanese allies. Tojo had issued orders directly from the Prime Minister's office to the area commander of the Burma army and Malaguchi to ensure that their soldiers did not harass the Indian locals. It was termed essential that the population be pacified if Japan was to win. The mistakes of China could not be repeated here.
London
Winston Churchill was a very angry man these days. His drinking had become worse, the courtesy of his Indian subjects. He was not as worried about the Nazis as he was about India.
"Stalin can take care of the fucking Krauts", said Churchill when he made a phone call to President Roosevelt a week before the commencement of Operation Overlord, in order to convince him to cancel the offensive and attack the Japanese in India instead. Despite his adamant protests, the bloody Americans would not listen to him. "
Give India independence and the Japs will have to go back" he says. What would a Yankee know about an Englishman's attachment to the empire ?
How could he be known as the man who gave away India ?
Churchill took another swig of the scotch, perhaps his 20th of the day. He was no longer keeping count.
India wasn't getting any reinforcements anytime soon, Churchill said as much to Linlithgow. "
Hold them with what you have". But he knew they didn't have anything. Hardly 50,000 white troops to protect the Empire's crown jewel. At this point he could only pray for the Indian troops to not rebel en masse and for the viceroy to not be moron.
It would take only one slip up for the whole country to be engulfed in flames.
While the Allied Command prepared to launch the D-Day invasion, Linlithgow slipped.
Amritsar
Mohan Singh Nagoke was a man who hated the foreign oppressors of his country. In the freedom movement, he'd resigned from a lucrative job under the DC of Amritsar, been shot while protesting and had served time. When he heard Netaji say
"Avenge Jallianwallah Bagh", he knew that the time to join the fight had come. The Viceroy had ordered all governors to ensure that no seditious activities took place. The Governor of Punjab, Sir James Glancy had ordered a strict curfew across the province.
On 25th May, Nagoke decided to defy and in his capacity as the Jathedar of Aakal Takht, Nagoke ordered all Sikhs to come to the Golden Temple to attend the
Sarbat Khalsa. 500 men from Amritsar gathered in the temple, armed with swords, spears, pickaxes, local-made, 12-bore rifles, and 5 ex-soldiers armed with Lee Enfield Rifles.
Nagoke in an impassioned speech declared that Netaji had attacked the Britishers in Bengal and now
"it is our patriotic duty to destroy the British and either let them swim away or let their dead bodies float to England".
The Amritsar Deputy Commissioner was extremely worried at these developments and decided to take a team of 10 officers to clear the Gurudwara the next day.
As the 11 white men walked into the Gurudwara (keeping their shoes on and without covering their heads), the Commissioner announced on the megaphone,
"VACATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY. I REPEAT VACATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY OR ELSE YOU WILL ALL BE ARRESTED. LEAVE NOW OR YOU WILL ALL BE ARR--
Before the DC could finish the sentence he was shot in the face and the officers were charged by the mob. Within the next 10 minutes the whole team had been murdered, torn to shreds and their jeeps burned. The news spread across Amritsar like wildfire and the DC's office informed the Governor of his death.
Governor James Glancy considered himself a man not to be messed with with. He was a soldier of the king and was going to inflict a brutal punishment on these savages. The governor ordered the 3rd battalion of the Punjab Regiment to march on the Golden Temple and to escort all citizens out.
Dead or Alive.
The soldiers arrived outside the temple in the early hours of 27th May. The battalion commander, Major John Simon decided not to ask them to come out. He decided that there was war going on it and rebels must be treated accordingly. He ordered fire on the temple, which was returned for a few minutes before being silenced.
The next decision that Simon would take would be the one most fatal to the British Empire in India
He ordered the two tanks with him to open fire on the Akal Takht, unless the men do not surrender. 5 shots were fired and the temple was charged by 700 soldiers. Mohan Singh Nagoke along with all of his men were slaughtered in cold blood. The Temple was filled with bodies, ammo shells and debris. Soldiers paraded around looking for rebels.
The destruction brought upon the holiest site of Sikhism by British troops. The picture taken by one Satpal Singh, a congress worker, did rounds across India and the news of it spread like wildfire. Hindus and Muslims too were dismayed to see such unwarranted destruction. Even the Muslim League called it a 'terrible tragedy' and called upon the government to action restraint. The Congress demanded the immediate resignation of Governor Glancy and the court martial and sentencing of Major John Simons. The Akali Dal gave public calls to assassinate the Viceroy and the Prime Minister.
Subhash Chandra Bose announced that it was an attack on the very soul and identity of the nation and that he would not die before avenging it.
Linlithgow himself was startled at this action by the Governor. He was at a loss about containing the fallout. While anything had not happened anywhere yet, tension was brewing and it was about to go off, sooner rather than later. All he could was hold down the fort.
Dhaka
Dhaka did not have a large garrison, with only about 12,000 troops and half of them Indians. Chittagong had 10,000 with only 2,000 British troops. The IJA attacked with 1,00,000 with 70,000 under General Sato attacking Dhaka and 30,000 under Bose's command attacking Chittagong.
The resistance in Chittagong was minimal with the Japanese 53rd division shelling the British positions 24/7. The allied Air Power did not work as well here since the Japanese brought their own this time and allied bombing was unable to protect Chittagong for long.
The British Commander tried to call for reinforcements from Calcutta but found that the telephone wires had been cut and the only road leading to Dhaka was destroyed. The city was surrounded and under supplied. The IJA was not letting any aerial food drops reach it due to the constant presence of Japanese planes. 7 out of 10 drops made to the troops but the troops only got 2 of them since the rest were either stolen or destroyed by the locals
On the 3rd day of the siege, the Indian troops, all of whom were Sikhs mutinied when they saw the pamphlets dropped by the Japanese.
The pamphlets had picture of the destroyed Golden Temple, captioned in Hindi,
"BE TRUE TO THE GURU, NOT THE ENEMY. KILL THE BRITISH AND JOIN THE INA."
2 hours later the Sikh troops murdered all British soldiers and surrendered the city to INA General, Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon.
The Chittagong harbour had 5 Royal Indian Navy Cruisers who bombed the victorious axis forces, amassing their casualties to 2,000. When it became known that Chittagong had fallen, the ratings deserted their ships and went to the INA men. The British officers could not man the ships alone and were also forced to surrender the following evening.
Chittagong fell on 30th May.
The siege of Dhaka went on simultaneously. The Japanese 54th Armoured Division had 20 Chi-Ha medium tanks and 20 artillery pieces bombing the British positions but here the resistance was fierce.
The British Commander was seemingly confident of holding off the Japanese advance but the supply situation was similar to Chittagong.
In addition an incident that took place on 31st May that made him very worried about what was going to happen next.
The 3 Anti Aircraft guns in Dhaka were bombed by 3 civilians. They were apparently cleanliness personnel on the barracks. At 1:00 AM in the night, the 3 of them armed with 3 grenades each went to clean the area around the guns. They went and sat under one gun each and took the pins out of 3 grenades they each had and just sat under the guns until they went off. The soldier on duty could only look on in disbelief.
The next day the Japanese airdropped 2,000 troops all over Dhaka and after some intense fighting, took the city.
The Dhaka Airdrop
Dhaka was taken on June 1st.
The offensive had around 7,000 Japanese and INA casualties and about 6,000 British troops dead and 4,000 Indian troops dead.
The British military command in India was not shocked at the fall of Dhaka and Chittagong. They knew it was coming. It was only a delaying manoeuvre for them to beef up defences at Calcutta. General Joseph Stilwell tried to convince the the Viceroy to let him take his Chinese troops back to Changsha to defend it against the Japanese and asked him not to try and defend Calcutta with the unreliable Indian troops and rather organise a defence at Patna and cover the northern flank. That way the only option that the Japanese would have would be to either go through the mountains in the north, or through the forests in Odisha. But this was rejected by the British command claiming that India was a higher priority for the British Empire than China.
Stilwell wasn't going to get to take any Chinese troops back to China. He flew back to China to inform Chiang.
The Japanese were once again quite happy with their progress in India. The next target was Calcutta. Even China didn't look bad now. Morale was up in the Empire. The Tojo government milked this victory dry for propaganda.
For Churchill, meanwhile, the drinking problem just got worse.
